A month, huh?

It’s been a whole month since I didn’t just totally phone in a blog post? Eh…it happens. Life happens. Life has happened. I’ve had a fun month, though.

1. I took the kids to Dallas for part of a weekend. The whole reason we really went was to see Seryn. You remember them, right? Several months ago they played a show in OKC and we took the whole band home afterwards. Those guys (and girl). They played at a charming venue called The Kessler that is situated near the Bishop Arts District, where we had spent that afternoon dining and shopping.

My daughter captured a lot of video in which she moved her phone a lot, flipped back and forth from portrait to landscape and stopped and started filming several times during a song. It’s cute. This was the most continuous one.

My son slept through almost their entire set and only awoke when Trent and Nathan came up to where we were sitting to say hi. Yeah, the rock show didn’t wake him but the two people in the empty room did. Third graders. Sigh. I found a nice quiet place for him to chill out while his sister and I hung out with all the friends and family after the show. This is Seryn’s hometown venue in a way, so lots of people mingled after for hugs and stories into the wee morning hours. I think we finally gave up and left the party at 1am.

The next day we slept in and I took the kids to breakfast at Spiral Diner, a restaurant where everything is vegan (except us) and most of it is house-made.

Then we had an afternoon at Klyde Warren Park. What a cool public space.

2. I started running. I don’t know exactly why I want to run so bad, but I do. And I am terrible at it. But I keep trying because I feel like there is an athlete in me that I have buried under toffee and self-doubt. The reason I feel this is because during times of stress I want to run or kickbox or swim or do hot yoga. My body doesn’t know how to do any of those things but I get serious cravings for them and those cravings go unrequited. No, I don’t replace them all with food but I do replace a lot of them with regret that I’ve not treated myself better. How healthy is that? Feel stress, then feel bad because you aren’t some kind of magician. Instead, I’ve opted to teach myself to run (with the aid of a couch to 5k app). The good news is that I can run for 10 minute stretches. The bad news is that I strained my left calf because I don’t do enough 10 minute stretches after I run. Super frustrating, but now I am doing a little bit of yoga while I wait for the calf to heal. Attempting to listen to my body all the time, is what this seems to be. If I need running, give myself running. If I need resting, give myself resting.

3. I almost lost my MacBook Pro. One day I turned on my laptop and it was whirring hard. And the battery indicator had a weird little ‘X’ on it. I couldn’t leave it untethered to a power supply and the fan only stopped running when I powered the computer all the way down. After running disk ulility I had an “Oh shit.” moment. It said my hard drive was corrupt. ::fuck:: I sent some panic texts to my nerd fleet. I used to be a bit of a nerd but let all that knowledge crumble with time. And I hadn’t backed up my computer in three years. Yes, you read that correctly. After buying a new external drive and clinching all of my body for a weekend, I fixed my own computer. LIKE A BOSS. It really wasn’t fixing as much as it was doing a ton of grossly overdue maintenance. At the end of it all, I even downloaded the lastest operating system like a victory lap.

4. I bought a car. The Accord needed to be replaced last summer. The transmission went belly up after some grossly overdue maintenance never happened (do we see a pattern yet?). At the time I was fuh-freaked out about 10,000 other things and rather than calmly assess the situation, I just panicked and threw THOUSANDS of dollars at the problem. Like a moron. Flash forward to this spring… The transmission wasn’t out yet, but I could tell that it was only a matter of time. Too much shit was hitting the fan this spring for me to do much about the car, I just crossed all my fingers and toes that it would live a litte longer. Liiiiiive, dammit!! And it did. In the last month or so I took two road trips and rather than be risky, I rented cars. I have another road trip planned for Saturday and last week I thought, “Oh, I guess I’ll rent a car again.” Then I died a little on the inside. Then I thought, “I’m just gonna call my bank and get a loan.” So, while waiting for a table at lunch a week ago today, that’s what I did. Two days ago, after much online searching and Twitter whining, I found the one I wanted from the dealership I wanted to support.

5. I let Rick Bayless make me dinner. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend you letting Rick Bayless make you dinner, too. Sure, there were 100 other people there and his hands didn’t likely touch every single plate…but damn was that a great meal. I’ve had a lot of great meals, his was definitely in the top 5 “event” meals I’ve had. Specific dishes were so good I don’t want to eat them again if he isn’t making it. Ceviche, I’m looking at you. This was part of a series of tornado relief events in Oklahoma City called OK Chefs’ Relief.

6. The fourth of July happened. I found ways to occupy myself as I was alone. For the first time in what feels like forever I had no boyfriend (long or short term), no husband, no kids and no family to work into my holiday weekend. I could just go and do and be. It was glorious. I did spend a fair amount of time with friends, but only made my plans last minute. And when I finally said, “Yes, I will come to your cookout,” I first laid down and took a two-hour nap first. Just because I could. In the latter part of the weekend I spent a holy shit ton of time alone, mostly at home. Again, glorious. My honey-do list shrank, my sleep deficit decreased and I got quiet. I wish I could say that I had some sort of epiphany, but really I just piddled around. I never do that. It taught me that I need to do that at least one day a month. Piddle with no real intentions other than baths, books and staring at the ceiling.Somewhere in there I bought a case of peaches and went to Food Swap OKC with mason jars of cobbler.

7. My kids are growing up. Before they left for summer vacation, they put in two weeks at a theater camp. It hurt my heart to see them so very on their acting game. I mostly added this in so I could share the pics.